Things Have Gone Wrong, Terribly Wrong
by stormsandsins
Summary: Three moments that paint a dark and dreary picture of a wizarding war and its aftermath. Love, friendship, sanity, virtue... all can be casualties.


Thanks to miss_daizy over at livejournal for prompting me when I felt down about my writer's block... which does seem to have abated somewhat. I do think I'll be writing some more in the near future :)

The prompt was "something about the trio from book 4". Er, I kind of erred. But hey, book 4 quotes! Also, I really have a thing for dark and dreary moments, and HP AU. It's like my brain doesn't accept books 6-7, and it's like "but I like to imagine what a war would have been like!" My brain, it is weird.

* * *

**Thing Have Gone Wrong, Terribly Wrong (War is Over)**

"_Must be nice, to have so much money you don't notice if a pocketful of Galleons goes missing."_  
− _Ron Weasley_

Ron was sleeping when the flimsy, pitiful thing he called a door banged like a shot against the peeling wallpaper of the shabbiest thing he had ever called home. And that was saying something.

"It's you," Hermione growled as she strode in, something in her fisted hand making a crinkling racket. "Isn't it?"

Ron peeled a bleary eye open, stoically taking in the shaking fury whose angry red face now hovered mere dangerous inches from his still unfocused eyes. He blinked, his vision clearing not for the better. Obviously his – girlfriend, could he say? It was a long time since they'd even shared a nice kiss. Roomate, at the very least, such as it was – had been running. The woman looked a frightening mess of curls and blotchy skin up close. Yawning and stretching at once, he managed a grunted, "What are you talking about?" It was fairly clear he would not be getting any more sleep. Pity.

The crinkly thing landed on his face pretty sharply. "_This!_" Hermione shrieked, continuing in a lower, dangerous voice that he'd learned to try to avoid at all costs, or risk her wrath face first. "So help me Merlin, Ron, if you insist on – _leprechaun gold_, Ron! And you thought it was a good idea? You've been found out!" She pointed an accusing fingertip at the damn ball of paper that had migrated to his chest at some point.

Temporarily stymied, Ron sat up, unballed the offensive crinkled thing, and took in the front page with the large static image of the casino and its murderous owner. He calmly handed it back to Hermione.

Bull-faced, she nearly ripped it out of his hands and silently dared him to contradict her with eyes that clearly bespoke her deep disgust in all things... whatever it said about the bloody gold.

"Hermione," Ron began, steepling his fingers over his crossed legs. "Look around you," he urged her, daring her right back. "Go on." When she did, cursorily, he scowled. "What do you see?"

Hermione's lips curled in a snarl as she hissed, "I see you're a thief, Ronald Weasley. That's all I can see."

Ron snorted. "If you'd only look past your high and mighty nose, you'd notice we're living in a pigsty and it's a strange new world out there. Mary Law-abiding isn't going to cut it anymore for our kind." He took her face in his shockingly tight grip – to hell with it, she was such a pigheaded girl. "We _lost_, Hermione. The only way to survive now is to scrape what we can and make do with it. And," he sneered, "don't worry, it's not like the muggles realise their money's gone until _I'm_ long gone. They have no idea it's me."

Hermione had seemed somewhat broodingly mollified by the stark picture he'd painted, but at his last words she drew up again. "Nevermind that," she said. "What you're doing is dangerous and illegal. You could get caught, if not by _my_ people-" she stressed the word bitterly not for his sake but because of all they'd lost "- then by Death Eaters who'd put two and two together and find us through your trail. And if you do, then-"

Overwhelmed with sudden emotion, Hermione sank onto the bed next to Ron, who drew her into his arms, resting his chin on her tangled hair. Merlin, life like this was too taxing. Hiding in hellish hovels for rats and not much else, constantly looking over their shoulders, avoiding using magic at all costs lest they be found, forced to move every so often so they wouldn't be found...

There were whispers... Had they all survived? Had they all died? They avoided the magical world because of these very questions. For the answer was too complex to even consider answering. And more questions would come. Which made surviving an everyday battle to have the privilege of worshipping the sun: _one more night gone by, one more day of evading the new world order._

"I can't lose you, too," Hermione finally managed to whisper after a silent moment where she clutched him so hard he was moved to gather her closer into him.

"Then you stay the hell away," Ron growled fiercely, holding her close enough to imprint her – all of her – in his memory.

Doing what he did everyday didn't scare him. Death didn't scare him. Death Eaters didn't scare him anymore.

The thought of Hermione being tortured as a result of a mistake on his part... he couldn't bear it.

A wise man once said that it wasn't death itself we were afraid of... it was the unknown. A world without Hermione... that was Ron's greatest weakness, and the feeling was now reinforced by this tightest of embraces.

#

_Some fear that Potter might resort to the Dark Arts in his desperation to win the tournament, the third task of which takes place this evening._  
− _Rita Skeeter, The Prophet_

"No."

Ron was categoric, his bulging arms crossed over his chest more than indicative of the strength behind his words.

"I have to."

Hermione sounded exasperated as she sighed, as though they'd had this very discussion far more times than she cared to count anymore. "You really don't, actually."

The tall redhead nodded at the bushy-haired young woman. "She's right," he said. "I've told time and _time_ again, there's another way."

But Harry Potter would hear none of it. "It'll take too long," he uttered distractedly, grimacing his irritation. Couldn't they understand the urgency of the situation? They couldn't bloody well live out the rest of their lives in this status quo of a war! "We need to act, now, tonight, before they recoup from today's attack. They won't see it coming!"

"Harry..."

Harry Potter shoved off his sear around the crude campfire, pacing angrily. "We're not accomplishing anything!" he growled, finally facing his friends again after another short moment, tense, taut, immobile on the surface. Beneath, he felt ready to burst out of his own skin with madness. Staring at Ron and Hermione, he scowled slowly, annoyed with their too-careful plans. He'd learned long ago that action was the finest way to get out of a tight situation – thinking too much about what could happen tended to paralyse one until they were too frightened to act.

He came to a decision on a whim. "That's it."

And he was gone the next instant, fire and dark intent in his eyes, a far cry from the shy, awkward young boy he once was.

"_Harry!_"

They saw the powerful green glow from afar within the next few instants.

And then nothing. Nothing but shivers brought on by the dark laughter in the night. All for nothing.

_You need to mean it_.

Yes, but an eager, wounded heart stood no chance, they knew.

Harry's friends stood frozen a long time. Unspeaking. Unfeeling.

Naught but the vicious night that augured of dark times ahead.

#

"_Avada Kedavra's a curse that needs a powerful bit of magic behind it - you could all get your wands out now and point them at me and say the words, and I doubt I'd get so much as a nosebleed. But that doesn't matter. I'm not here to teach you how to do it. Now, if there's no counter-curse, why am I showing you? Because you've got to know. You've got to appreciate what the worst is. You don't want to find yourself in a situation where you're facing it. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!"  
_− Mad Eye Moody

All she sees is... nothing. In these moments, these far too frequent moments when she stares death in the face wherever she treads she sees nothing but what she must do, what she hates to do with a revulsion that roils in her guts, what she can't get out of her mind at night when shivers rock her and she can't get warm. It seeps in her bones, her blood, this bone wracking fear, this disgust in herself, this illness that tries her heart and stomach the hardest.

Sometimes she doesn't want to wake up.

Sometimes she wants to die.

Everyday she hates herself a little bit more.

It goes against everything that she believes in, what she does. She is ridding the world of evil, she needs to remind herself, but all she sees is yawning black mouths that can't utter the scream of death as their life leaves them.

Playing the hand of God feels wrong, so wrong, but her heart also tells her she must, she _must_, if she wants to find peace one day... She's only afraid she'll never find it in the very dead of night.

Perhaps she never will at all. But at least she'll have tried to make the world a safer – a saner – place for someone else.

A masked face she hadn't noticed suddenly catches her off-guard. Hermione whirls, wand gripped tightly in her fist, and she steels herself, finds that source of strength within herself that keeps her alive in these blurry moments.

_I must_.

"Avada Kedavra!"

_I am a warrior._

Later she'll wrap herself up in her guilt and a threadbare quilt and attempt to quell her nausea as she fights for a dreamless sleep in the arms of the last remaining person who believes there's something to be done.

_This is a nightmare_.

* * *

_Now, now, darling, oh don't lose your head  
'Cause none of us were angels..._

− _Imogen Heap, "Speeding Cars"_


End file.
